Mark F. Madura wrote:I'm pretty sure Mark Bell still uses Visual Reality.
Visual Software was founded in 1991 and was acquired by Micrografx in 1996 via a stock transaction valued at around $11 million.
Micrografx was acquired by Corel in late 2001; also in a stock swap valued around $32 million.
At the risk of channeling Jim Horecka.....
Micrografx published one of the first Windows based paint (Picture Publisher) and illustration (Designer) programs back in the late 80's which I used on my Windows 3.1 AST computer. These programs actually introduced features to the Windows platform before Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator did - the ability to composite bitmap images being one of the most notable. Picture Publisher and Designer were in direct competition with Corel products and, as Mark notes, ultimately bought out Micrografx. The Micrografx products are still updated and published by Corel and are still part of my software arsenal. I have Photoshop and Illustrator, but find the learning curve to be a bit steep for occasional use.
The Visual Reality rendering software actually started life as a plastic surgery simulation tool. This is why the rendering files use the .eye suffix. I purchased my first copy of VR directly from Visual Realty at their San Fernando Valley offices about 3 days after the big Northridge Earthquake in 1994. Their offices were in shambles and I remember wiping the dust off the box after they dug it out of a pile of rubble in their stockroom. The next week was one of the longest of my life as I tried to learn the software and produce finished renderings for a project - modeled in DataCAD of course.
Having used VR extensively in the past, I have to say that it was a real bear to control. I subsequently moved on to Autodesk Viz (a relatively low cost subset of 3ds Max which is no longer offered by the Draconian Dragons at Autodesk) and now to Sketchup. I think the version of O2C included with DataCAD is actually more powerful and useful than VR.
It sounds like Dwight has experience with VR so it probably makes sense to try to keep on using it. It may be better to spend the effort learning Sketchup however. After all, I don't think VR has been updated in close to 20 years.